Bookslut: Interview with Matthew Henriksen

In the most recent issue of Bookslut, Nick Sturm asks questions like: "How many bees does it take to eat Matthew Henriksen?"

We always enjoy hearing more from Matthew Henriksen, and this interview is no exception. Here, he reflects on Frank Stanford, his experience teaching in Harlem, and the "awe at the pervasive beauty that surrounds us all" in poetry, and especially in life. Be sure to check out the full interview here.

‎The best poems are apostrophes. Talk intensely and without irony to no one long enough and your start to see your own investments in other people's interests fall away. You can't fit much experience into a poem at all if you don't first break everything down. The line, of course, delivers everything in a poem by disrupting our usual habits of perception and processing. I could call the line the force that drives disfiguring music. I see both nature and society as disfigured, and in that flaw beauty becomes more readily apparent. The line attempts to force us to hear and to see.

Ordinary Sun on Hazel & Wren

Very excited to see this review over on Hazel & Wren. A sort of virtual community space, Hazel & Wren seems to have a lot to offer. Read the review and see for yourself!

... he’s searching for something real in all the muck that is this world, and attempting to find a way to be happy with that through his images. “What we don’t know is our only law” he writes in “Copse.” This is the governing theme throughout, exploring the unknown. The poems resonate with an honest, unflinching beauty. They border on disturbing, tragic, and even violent in places, yet they are full of natural grace and most of all, acceptance.

Our subscription drive continues! We've now met our goal of 25 subscribers and are moving upwards to 50. The 50th subscriber will recieve a Black Ocean t-shirt. And all June subscribers recieve a signed, limited-edition hardbound copy of Zachary Schomburg's Fjords. Subscribe here.

Ordinary Sun on NewPages

Matthew Henriksen's Ordinary Sun has been reviewed on New Pages today! If you haven't picked up the book yet, this review provides a lot of great excerpts to whet your appetite. After recent conversations discussing the accesibility of these poems, I think Patrick James Dunagan gets to the heart of what this book offers--vision and wonder reflected though surprising language.

The fact that Henriksen appears not concerned with knowing what to do with experience itself is one of the saving graces of his writing. His comfort to be caught up with wondering his way through puzzling detours presented by life via language affords him opportunity to weave the reader into the presence of being with the poem. He doesn’t push any agenda, but gives way to the visions of the poem that they be manifest...

If you're bored of agenda and ready to experience language, be sure to check out Ordinary Sun today.

Update on 2011-06-02 14:26 by Nikkita Cohoon

Ordinary Sun was also reviewed in Tarpaulin Sky. Check it out!

Perhaps this is the true query of Henriksen's narrator posited as permeable—when in the urban landscape, one must take in both "natural" and "artificial" images with the same awe among throngs of others who absorb the same images, the same "kind of shit."

The Sun Grows Arms: Henriksen and Shimoda In Conversation

Recently,  Johannes Göransson and Adam Robinson sparked a discussion of Ordinary Sun. The conversation continues on HTMLGIANT as Matthew Henriksen and Brandon Shimoda interview one another, unafraid to ask difficult questions, such as "What do you think about a poem of yours being read aloud by nurses in the emergency room of a hospital?" or "Would you kill someone?" You can check out the post here and learn the answer to these questions, and others just as pressing and evocative. If you need to catch up, you can find a short summary and links to the previous posts here on our blog.

Nurse Jackie and another medical professional discuss Ordinary Sun and The Girl Without Arms.

Ordinary Sun a best seller!

Ordinary Sun debuts on the Poetry Foundation's contemporary best seller list this week at number 23! Read more here.

Robinson & Görannson Weigh In: Ordinary Sun

Which matters more when reading a book of poems: the meaning you take from it or the experience you have when reading it?  

In Adam Robinson's review of Ordinary Sun, he shares his mother's questions upon reading the book, confronting the difficulty some readers have when they cannot pinpoint a concrete meaning. Robinson asks "how can one say a thing that cannot be said?"--how do we interpret language beyond just gleaning information--and ultimately determines that, for Ordinary Sun, at least,

"[e]ternity within temporality doesn’t make a lick of sense within the framework we’ve constructed for sense-making, but that’s the name of the game for poetry; life is bigger than sense. Accordingly, there is a metaphysics in the weave of Ordinary Sun that indicates something behind our precarious notion of communicating ideas." 

Johannes Görannson (translator of With Deer) posted a response to this review on his blog, where he argues that

"[t]he 'difficulty' of Henrikson’s poetry is not about access but the experience it aims to put the reader/writer through. It’s not about some cavalier stroll through poetry’s garden (picking up a bee box to listen to before putting it down, going swimming in/fucking Emily Dickinson/her poems) as in Collins, but an idea of poetry as spiritual violence that breaks us apart..."

Check out both of these compelling reviews and then head to the comments section, where you can add to the discussion yourself.

Consider giving the gift of Ordinary Sun on Mother's day--and see what conversation results! 

On the Airwaves

Matthew Henriksen recently did a radio interview for a local NPR station to talk about his new book, Ordinary Sun. You can listen to the interview here, and because you'll want more, the audio extras (baseball! jazz! poetry!) here! 

Highlights to come in a follow up!

Dismantled Catechism

New City Lit has reviewed Matthew Henriksen's ORDINARY SUN. If you haven't picked up this book yet, here's a taste of what you're missing (from Kelly Forsythe's review):

“Ordinary Sun,” separated into nine sections, functions under Henriksen’s idea of a “dismantled catechism,” the breaking down of the ordinary and commonplace into extreme, surprising close-ups of perception. He writes:

Sometimes she’d touch
a body in her empty bed.

A stranger’s face, a dark
spot on the wall, watched
her as if from a mirror

and behind the face a hand
held a brush for her hair.

The rawness of imperfection in this portrait helps the reader to push past the veils of the physical world to enter into a painful but graceful emotional landscape. In the title section, which is also the final portion of “Ordinary Sun,” Henriksen motions for the reader to more actively re-experience with him: “The body moved above the water / and the water was cold. / It made the sirens roar.” His associations become stronger and assertive, though still surreal and immediate.

*****

Matthew will be reading from Ordinary Sun at Nightbird Books on Thursday April 21 at 7pm. 

Update on 2011-04-21 01:58 by Nikkita Cohoon

Listen to an interview with Matthew about Ordinary Sun here.